Happy Christmas, Merula Snyde
by juniperwindsong
Summary: "Merula's got a secret admirer?" Ismelda asks incredulously, then pretends to vomit into her pile of gifts.


**A/N:** This story exists in two versions. The first, posted here, used my MC's name and includes an epilogue that features Felix Rosier and ties into my other story Dragonology 101. The second is a reader insert version that does not include the Felix epilogue. That version is posted on Tumblr ( blog/juniperwindsong), so if you're looking to ship yourself with Merula in a very innocent, fluffy way that story is for you :)

* * *

"Ugh. Christmas is the worst," Merula complains. She rips the cheerful wreath off the first year girl's dormitory door.

"Whatever, Merula," replies Juniper, sitting cross legged on her bed.

She waits until Merula has stormed down the stairs and the echo of her boots has faded before getting up and rehanging the wreath.

* * *

"Christmas is for stupid little kids!" Merula yells, aiming a jinx at the Christmas tree in the corner of the Slytherin common room. It sways dangerously, candles flickering, before Juniper rushes over to steady it against the wall.

"You want to set the rug on fire?" Juniper scolds as Merula cackles and takes off running through the entrance wall, her shoe laces whipping around her boots carelessly.

* * *

"Why do people care so much about this stupid, made-up holiday?" Merula sneers. She steps hard onto the foot of the second-year Hufflepuff singing carols in the courtyard. The boy breaks off with a yelp, jumping up and down holding his injured foot, and toppling over into a pile of snow.

Merula laughs cruelly as she clomps away.

"Was that really necessary?" Juniper calls after her, stooping to help the boy up.

He looks after Merula with a dazed expression. "Why does she hate Christmas so much?"

* * *

"Why _do_ you hate Christmas so much, Merula?" Juniper finally asks testily, as Merula feeds a string of silver tinsel into the common room fire. "Father Christmas never visit you as a child?"

Merula rounds on her in fury. "Keep your muggle rubbish to yourself, why don't you, _Windsong_. You're embarrassing everyone in our house! I don't even know how you got put into Slytherin! Someone ought to rip a new hole in the sorting hat for being so _stupid!"_ She marches up the stairs to bed, battered boots stomping on every step.

_"_It's not just me, right?" Juniper asks the boy across the sofa from her, she thinks his name is Barnaby. "She's even worse than usual, isn't she?"

Barnaby shrugs and doesn't comment.

Ismelda Murk pauses in tearing the needles off the tree in the corner. "You're such a prat, Windsong. You know her parents are in Azkaban."

Juniper turns to stare at Ismelda. "What?"

Ismelda rolls her eyes. "They were Death Eaters, you moron. Everyone knows that." She turns her attention back to the now nearly-bear branch of the tree. "Don't know why it bothers her though. Wish my parents were in Azkaban."

Juniper closes her book, and walks up the stairs behind Merula without another word.

* * *

"Merula?" Juniper says her name softly as she peers around the dormitory door.

"Ugh. What do you want, _Windsong?"_ Merula groans. She lays face down on her bed, boots still on. Her voice is thick, as though she's been crying.

Juniper walks slowly over to her own bed, next to Merula's, and sits carefully on the edge. "I'm sorry."

"_Be_ sorry for bothering me and leave me alone," Merula snaps at her. Then adds, "What are you even sorry for?"

"I didn't know. About your parents. I can understand why Christmas-time is hard for you. It's hard for me, too."

Merula sits up, wiping her eyes fiercely and glaring at Juniper. "Don't you _dare!_ My family is nothing like yours! At least I know where my parents _are_!"

Juniper ignores this. "You know, Merula, we don't have to be like this. We have a lot in common. If you ever want to talk-"

Merula jumps up with a hysterical cackle. "Don't make me sick. We have _nothing_ in common." She stomps to the door. "And I'd curse my own tongue off before I talk to you about _anything!"_

She slams the door hard behind her.

* * *

"Windsong." Professor Snape's cold drawl echoes across the potion classroom, empty except for one student. Juniper looks up hastily from where she sits in a corner, her cauldron bubbling and her potions textbook open on the table.

"Professor!" she gasps. "I'm sorry, I-"

"You have exactly six seconds to explain yourself, and that is only because I do not wish to give up my own evening to your well-deserved detention."

Juniper gulps. "I was working on...a Christmas present," she says shakily.

Snape stares at her, his face unreadable.

She looks down, cheeks red. "That's it, I promise."

Snape sweeps across the dungeon imperiously, cloak billowing behind him. He stops in front of Windsong's table and looks down at the book in front of her, reading the title of the potion she's working on upside down. He glances into her cauldron, then at her face. Juniper meets his eyes nervously.

After several tense seconds, Snape speaks. "You have 15 minutes. If you've not completed it in that time then you're far too incompetent to attempt it again."

Snape stalks away. At the door, he stops and pronounces, "And use 'wool of bat' in place of 'beetle eyes'. It creates a darker color." He shuts the door to the dungeon firmly.

* * *

"Looks like someone stepped on your present, Windsong. Too bad," Merula jeers.

Juniper steps sleepily into the common room on Christmas morning. Barnaby and Ismelda are opening their gifts, looking pleased and apathetic respectively.

Merula tosses Juniper a parcel wrapped in brown paper. There's a dirty boot-print across the top of the wrapping, and what looks like chocolate oozes out between the twine. Rowan's name is written across the tag.

"I honestly feel bad for people still getting Christmas gifts from their family," Merula says haughtily, throwing herself onto the couch. "I'd hate to still be treated like a baby at eleven years old."

"Fine. Can I have your present, then?" asks Ismelda, holding up a small box wrapped with a silver bow.

Merula sits up quickly. "You got me a present?"

"No," Ismelda answers with contempt. "But I think this one's supposed to be for you."

Ismelda drops the box disdainfully over the back of the sofa onto Merula's stomach.

Merula picks up the box and turns it over in her fingers suspiciously. She glances at the tag and reads aloud: "To the most powerful witch at Hogwarts..."

Ismelda snickers and Barnaby asks, confused, "Who's that?"

"Me, you idiot," Merula replies rolling her eyes, as she unties the bow and lifts the lid of the box. She pulls out a small, round jar filled with a thick, black substance.

"Is it jam?" Barnaby asks, eyes wide with excitement. "I love jam!"

"No, it's..." Merula inspects the label. "Boot polish?"

"Magical boot polish," Juniper explains, sitting across from Merula on the opposite sofa. "It fixes scuffs and wear and things. Makes 'em look like new."

Merula, Ismelda, and Barnaby all stare at her.

Juniper blushes and says hastily, "It's in our textbook, I recognise it from the pictures." She gives Merula the most disdainful expression she can muster. "It's a really easy potion to make, anyone could do it. It doesn't make you that special."

But Merula is glowing now. "Yeah, but no one made any for you, did they? Someone took the time to make it for me." She savors these words, her eyes bright.

"Merula's got a secret admirer?" Ismelda asks incredulously, then pretends to vomit into her pile of gifts.

"Looks that way," says Juniper, suppressing a grin.

"Shut up," says Merula, with no real venom. She's smirking widely as she stands up and walks toward the staircase. She looks back to where Juniper sits holding her squashed parcel in her lap and stops.

"I'm...sorry about your present, Windsong." And Juniper is surpised to hear something like real regret in her tone. "Whoever did it was probably just really upset. I bet they feel bad about it now."

"It's alright," Juniper says. "I don't really fancy chocolate frogs much, anyway."

"Oh, can I have them, then? I never get sweets!" Barnaby asks excitedly. "I'll trade you for this!" He holds up what looks like a large fang.

Juniper laughs. "Sure!" She tosses the parcel across the room to Barnaby, who fumbles with it, grinning. She watches Merula float away up the stairs, clutching the little jar tightly in both hands, and she smiles softly.

"Happy Christmas, Merula."

* * *

_Two years later_

"'To the most powerful witch at Hogwarts?'" Felix says doubtfully, reading the tag hanging off the wrapped parcel Juniper is currently attaching to the leg of a tawny school owl. "Don't tell me you're sending some cursed object to Merula. Can't you let her be for the holidays?"

Juniper looks up at him offended. "Excuse me, let _her_ be? She's the one who won't lay off me!" She fixes the silver bow so it sits up straighter on the lumpy package. "Besides, it's not a cursed object. it's a Christmas present."

She carries the bird to the owlery window and lets him launch off her outstretched arm.

Felix raises an eyebrow. "Really. What sort of present?"

"A scarf."

"A scarf?" he repeats skeptically.

"Yes. Not a school one, a nice one. She was looking at it in Hogsmeade." Juniper meets Felix's dubious gaze. "She'll like it, I promise."

Juniper makes her way down the winding owlry stairs. Felix follows her, still perplexed.

"Why are you suddenly sending Merula a Christmas present? And why wouldn't you sign it? Unless..." he trails off, his eyes wide. "_You're_ Merula's secret admirer? The one she wouldn't shut up about her first year? That sends her a gift each Christmas?"

Juniper whirls around, pointing her finger into his face. "If you _ever_ tell her it's me, I will..." She struggles to think of a punishment heinous enough to scare him into silence. "...dog-ear the pages of a _Dragon Keeper's Guide_ and tell Madam Pince it was you!"

Felix snickers. "That's really the worst thing you could think of?"

"She'll never let you check out that book again! Or any book, possibly."

Felix tries to arrange his features to look suitably serious. "Understood. I'll make sure not to let it slip."

Juniper regards him shrewdly for a moment, eyes narrowed, before turning back around. She takes the stairs two at a time, leaping lightly over the raised lip of the door frame and bouncing out onto the snowy grounds. Felix follows at a dignified pace, smiling at her high spirits and feeling immensely fond of the buoyant thirteen year old. Felix makes a mental note to himself: after he graduates, he will send Juniper Windsong a Christmas gift every year for the remainder of the Hogwarts career.


End file.
